


All Our Tomorows

by cailures



Category: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 03:51:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7829392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cailures/pseuds/cailures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of The Cursed Child, Harry Potter invited Draco over for dinner. They have all spent enough time living in the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Our Tomorows

**Author's Note:**

> For #10

There was a good deal of chaos and pain upon their return, and many meetings to sort events out. Rest for the weary and recovery were in short supply. If any of them had harbored any doubt that they'd returned to the proper and fully restored world, the level of questioning that followed would have assured them, as everything was double and triple checked, examined, and quite often yelled about It takes time to generate those levels of paperwork, and more time to clear it away enough to do anything else.

It was therefore a little while before anyone was able to agree to what should be done with the time turner. After that came the more difficult task.

Asking Draco Malfoy to give it up.

***

Draco made it as far as one of the neat little gardens tucked behind the ministry building, and there he sat down on a bench, near a wall where a vine had found its way up the side, and was sending out gentle sprays of flowers. The effect was somewhat marred by the amount of ash and smoke smell lingering in the air. for the little courtyard was less a hidden gem of solitude than it was a concession to the members of wizarding world clinging to the stereotype of wise elders who could blow smoke rings and puffed away on pipes. Still, it was a quiet, somewhat disreputable entrance to the Ministry, and it seemed a more fitting entrance than the main one.

But this is where his resolve evaporated. He could go no further, so he sat,and waited for the next thing to happen without his interference.

When the time he was suppose to arrive had come and gone and perhaps gone a little further than that, Harry Potter ambled outside, looking unsurprised and unhurried. He took a moment to look around the little garden, perhaps never having seen it previously, before walking over to Draco's side.

Draco was sitting, time turner in his hands, watching the sun play against it in the fading day. It was one of the last hours of sun, and the approaching evening was lending a honeyed richness to the quality to the light, even in this tucked-away spot.

"You know, the ministry will probably want to put that somewhere safe." Harry said, calmly, hands in his pockets.

Draco did not look up. "I know. I just want to sit with the possibilities a moment longer." Draco rubbed a finger along the edge of the time turner, as if trying to smooth out the golden filigree.

"What are you considering?" Harry asked.

Draco quirked an eyebrow, noting that Harry's tone hadn't been a warning or an accusation. A plain and simple question, as if it were nothing more than 'would you like some tea?'. More neutral than the long history between them would have indicated possible, a history where 'would you like the tea' would have been said as an insult and laced with threats.

"Astoria." Draco answered, after a short pause. "Giving this up means giving up that last hope."

Harry nodded and sat down next to him, a bit heavily. "I can understand the temptation."

Draco gave a little weary huff. "The other day I watched you walk away from a chance to save your parents. I've seen you do a lot of remarkable things, Potter, but that-"

Harry clasped his hands together in his lap, and they trembled with the force of his grip. "I had to. Maybe if I hadn't had everyone with me who made the world that resulted from that choice bearable, I wouldn't have been able to do it. But the last few days showed well enough that you can't really fix the world all at once. Just keep making the right choices over and over again, going forward."

The light reflecting off the time turner danced across Draco's face. "Even if it costs you the world to save it."

Harry nodded, a bit tired.

Draco looked at the far wall, imagining. "I tell myself it would be enough just to see her again. But I know if I went back, it wouldn't be enough. Not if I could touch her. And if I could touch her, I could tell her I loved her. And if I could tell her I loved her, I could save her." He ran a hand over his hair, scratching a little at his scalp. "You know, my parents want nothing to do with me these days."

Harry blinked at the apparent sudden change of topic. "Oh?"

Draco leaned his head back a little, momentarily looking entirely too much like his father, haughty, the lines on his face harder and more contemptuous. "You've become soft. That muggle-loving wife of yours and that offspring of hers have ruined you-" He sniffed, shaking off the impersonation, and instead gave a wry little smile. "I think she would have liked that, really. She spent so much of her time with me weeding out all the little vines of my father's influence, seeing the best in me, better than I could myself. I never knew what convinced her to accept my proposal, but I knew she knew I loved her, truly _her_ , when my parents were so against the match. My father was a terrible man. He would have been in favor of taking what he felt he deserved, and damn the consequences to anyone else." He gave the time turner a gentle little toss in his hand, as if it were nothing more than a pebble he'd picked up. "So one of the reasons I won't use the time turner is because it's something _he_ would have done and _she_ wouldn't have. That's my guide."

He held out the time turner to Harry.

Harry reached for it, slowly, and took the opportunity to hold Draco's hand, giving a squeeze. "I know I barely knew her, but I'm sure she would be proud. She would understand."

Although his hand twitched, Scorpius did not draw it back. "Scorpius has a lot of the best of her in him. She gave so much of herself to him, for him. I see her every time I look at him."

"And here I thought he took after you." Harry gently rook his hand away, smoothly moving the time turned to a side pocket.

"The best of me is from her as well." Draco shook his head a little.

They were quiet a moment longer, both of them turning over any number of sad or meaningful words that didn't quite form well enough to be spoken.

Harry put his hands on his knees, bracing for a moment as if to rise, paused, and then said, as if on impulse. "Come to dinner at our place."

Draco looked at him, quite taken aback.

Harry grinned, taking that as some strange encouragement, and continued. "Look, it's not like our sons aren't fated to be best friends, and we're certainly not enemies anymore. You yourself said you're too often alone. Come to dinner. Think how angry it would make your father."

Draco stammered "But-"

Harry's grin because a little stiffer, worry setting in. "We don't have to tell anyone."

Draco looked aghast. "I don't care about that after everything t. It's just- I understand you do the cooking."

Harry did rise then, laughing, and held a hand out to Draco. "Not tonight. Come on, I'll introduce you to the muggle concept of delivery pizza."

Draco took the proffered hand and rose.

***

Ginny and Harry lived in an integrated house, using both wizarding world and muggle technology, in a home designed to be friendly with its comforts and comfortable with itself and its occupants.

Draco could have looked down on it, and knew his old self would have looked down on it, if it had been the sort of clutter that existed at the Weasley family's burrow, but the muggle technology was something too unfamiliar for him to be at ease with quick judgements.

There was a television playing in one room, and music coming from another- muggle, he classified it, but was vaguely aware that it might be some of the modern wizard youth's style instead, as it was growing harder to tell them apart. But there were also animated portraits, some of them making faces at him, hanging on the walls, and a couple of owls were resting on perches just down the hall. A clock on the wall showed where various members of the family were, and something bright was zipping about the ceiling, though he had no idea what it was.

"What do you think?" Harry asked.

Draco considered. He knew Scorpius had been to visit in the days after- after the event. He had wanted to keep his child cocooned and safe, but his child, for all that he was showing a renewed affection for his father, and a renewed confidence in his father's affection for himself, had wanted to be here once the initial shock had warn off. Draco had been wary- even now his instinct was still to secure his son away- but loving his son meant loving his son as who he was, and sometimes that meant letting go. There were worse places to go.

All he said was "It's very different from where I grew up."

Harry shook his head, no doubt considering any number of possible interpretations of that. From a moment Draco considered that he would take it as an insult.

But Harry's look was kind, and there was something of the new, somewhat fragile warmth there. "Very different from where I grew up as well. I like this a lot better."

Draco had a sudden memory, quite random, of when he was a small child, maybe five or six, and he'd broken some forbidden object of his fathers, one of the ones he wasn't supposed to know about, let alone touch. He'd feared his father would yell, but instead he'd just gone very still, and so, so tall. He'd thought of that moment for years after, passing that spot in the hall of the manor, and then he had just not thought about it. Until this moment.

"I think I do as well." Draco said, and they moved to the dining room.

Ginny was laying out plates, and a warm, inviting smell was coming from them. The food looked- interesting, the front of his mind said, because he was working on squashing the parts of him that leapt to judgements and contempt. A new experience, it suggested. Aren't you _dreadfully_ tired of your existing experiences?

Ginny smiled at him, and walked forward. "It's good to see you." She made a casual gesture with her wand, switching off the various contraptions in the background that were muddling the soundscape. "The kids are off elsewhere tonight, though you wouldn't know it from the amount of things they leave on." Another gesture, and a familiar tune started up instead, playing at a softer and more comfortable volume. "That's better. It's just us here tonight."

"It's good to see you as well." He took a seat.

Ginny, who seemed entirely at ease with bridging the gap between the wizarding world an the muggle world, explained the various dishes as she served them. There was, indeed, delivery pizza, which involved quite a discussion of the number of undignified ways to eat it, with no apparent dignified option. There was also delivery Chinese, which involved the use of chopsticks, which were very definitely not paired small wands. Harry had laughed at that observation, and there was some story about wands verses knives for cultural signifiers of violence. There was some homemade dishes as well, because Ginny said that even though Harry did most of the cooking most of the time, she was fairly sure her mother had laid sort of charm or curse on her, leaving her entirely unable to have a guest in her home and not feed them something homemade. There was a pitcher of beer as well, though he wasn't sure if it was muggle or magic, and wasn't sure it would much matter.

The conversation was surprisingly easy, and the food, though mostly unfamiliar, was quite good. Draco kept waiting for it to go badly, and found that it didn't. Or rather, he waited for it to turn out to be some sort of trick, or a test of his dignity, but here in the Potter household he was seeing yet another new aspect to Harry Potter he hasn't expected to ever see; Harry Potter relaxed. Harry Potter not on guard in any particular way. Harry Potter deciding that he, Draco Malfoy, lifelong rival and source of conflict, was safe to be around.

Even more surprising, he found that he did not mind. It was not, as he had anticipated, some complex dance floor he'd have to lightly step his way around. It was just easy.

Somewhere around the point that he'd given up trying to keep his hands from getting messy, he started to talk. Harry's words earlier, about how he'd barely known Astoria, seemed to be pushing at him, and as a result many of the words they pushed out were about her.

"You know, she was very interested in muggle foods." he said, somewhere through his second helping of food. "There's more of them than us, she'd say, they have to have made some interesting dishes. She brought home something called spotted dick once, it was a while before we tried anything again."

Harry was trying not to laugh around a mouthful of food.

"My father was always bringing home muggle food, but it was usually a disaster." Ginny said. "Like when he brought home microwave popcorn and tried an engorgement charm on it, since we didn't have a microwave. Ended up with popcorns the size and weight of blodgers."

"I can assure you, my first experience with chocolate frogs wasn't easy on me, either." Harry countered. "And we eat at muggle restaurants often enough to see plenty of disasters between different muggle communities. Spicy, for instance, is a very relative term. we should try some Indian food, maybe next week."

Ginny just rolled her eyes. "You're saying that because you haven't done any food shopping since we got back." She turned to smile at Draco. "I know it's pointless to ask anyone from Hogwarts how they met, but I understand you and Astoria didn't start seeing each other until after."

After, he thought for a moment. After Hogwarts. After the war. After was such a deep line in his history. But rather than the familiar cloud of sorrow, there was instead a moment of lightness, like a breeze carrying an unexpected note of music. He remembered his first days learning to see Astoria for Astoria.

He tried to put words around it. "There weren't a lot of pureblood families left who didn't have at least a few prominent members in Azkhaban after the war. And those that were out were ones that had opposed Voldemort, and hated us for siding with him, or sided with him and hated us for betraying him. Astoria's family was somewhere between those two. The wizarding world has never been exactly large, but our portion of it got very, very small."

Ginny listened, looking sympathetic and interested. She talks to people for a living, listens to them, he thought. She's very good at it. We're all rather good at listening to terrible histories, these days. We've had so much practice.

So what was the heart of it? "She made me laugh. A real laugh. That was the thing, you see. I wasn't raised with laughter. Mockery, derision, snide smiles, a cool detachment- all of it framed as dignity, a lofty snobbery. But actual laughter was something commoners did, something done by those with no self-control. It just wasn't done." He heard a bit much of his father in that tone, and took a quick swallow of the beer to wash the taste out of his mouth. "She laughed. I think is was as much a surprise for her as for me. There wasn't a lot to laugh about, as Slytherins. After the war. Our families refused to admit we'd lost. That we were wrong. That we were still wrong. And somehow, despite all of that hanging over us, she made me laugh."

He didn't like the seriousness that was creeping over the table, and a particular memory twitched at him. "There was the time my father asked her to give a speech at dinner, because he was the sort that thought speeches at dinner was what you did, and she recited this lovely, beautiful poem. He was entranced the entire time. One of the few times he looked pleased with me having her over. Then he asked her where she had found it, and she said it was from a muggle author, she'd just changed a few of the words. He broke a plate, he was so furious."

He laughed, remembering. "For years after that, any time my father was being difficult, she would smile, and slip some part of that poem into the conversation, and watch to see if he caught it. He almost never did. It was hard to keep from laughing. She would look so innocent, which made it worse. I don't think he understood how little he understood her."

He swirled the last dregs of the beer in the glass. "After he died, she insisted on taking flowers to his grave on a regular basis. She said we should forgive the dead as much as we could, as they'd lost their chance to be better, which was a great tragedy."

He closed his mouth, realizing he'd brought more darkness down on the moment after all. With a bit of a shake, he decided to push the conversation somewhere lighter. Away from himself. "What about you two? It's not like either of you led particularly private lives, with much of Hogwarts watching every actions you took. Amazing either of you managed a romance."

Ginny filled his glass from the pitcher. "Harry perhaps. I was just one of many Weasleys."

Harry made a noise of protest, a look of affectionate disbelief on his face.

She pointed a finger at him. "Don't deny it. You fell in love with my family first. I think it took you a bit to notice _me_ individually."

Harry looked affronted, though it was with a glowing good cheer that gave it a lie. "I hope I can be a bit forgiven for having often had other things on my mind. I was rather busy much of the time."

Ginny merely tilted her head a little, and gave him look where a smile was playing at the edge of a pretended disapproval. "Now that's a deflection, not an answer."

Harry took a long sip of water, mulling over a response. "I will admit that I hope our family can mimic- " at Ginny' s look he hastily changed hs words- " _continue_ the atmosphere of love and inclusion I felt there. It was the first time in my life I understood why anyone would want to go home. But I assure you, I fell for you and you alone. Individually."

Her eyes crinkled at the edges with her smile. "I'm glad you've learned the see the value of that."

Draco looked between them, aware that some private joke was being shared, but uncertain what it was. There was a moment of painful jealousy, quickly washed away in an wave of touched affection. He missed that sort of closeness with his wife, but glimpsing it here was a reminder that it was a real thing, not an invention of his lonely mind. And he was grateful, deeply, that both Harry and Ginny trusted him enough to show this side of their lives to him, and didn't seem to think a thing of it. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he was inside the bubble of that warmth and security, rather than walled off behind a thick and soundless glass.

He must have been staring a little, because Ginny blushed a little, catching his eye, and said "Would you like some dessert?"

He cleared his throat. "Yes, please."

The dessert was beautiful, with layers of fruit and some confectionary, and he had to ask twice if it was really and truly muggle in origin. There seemed to be some magic in, because the taste was bright and sweet and made him think of summer days with not much to do, and lazy evenings where the summer seemed to be wrapped up in trapped sweetness of sun-warmed fruit.

Astoria would have loved it, he thought. She seemed so present in that moment. Like she was just out of the room, and any moment she'd come in and place a hand at the back on his neck, or he could hear her singing to Scorpius if he just listened. He remembered how she would stroke his hair, particularly on the days he needed soothing, and would pull on it a little when she was saying something she wanted him to listen to particular, and not for him to just zone out on the pleasure of having her there, touching him.

He remembered one of the particular things she used to say about his hair, and like everything else, it seemed to shift his mood.

Ginny caught his shift in expression. "What's wrong? You seemed to be enjoying that so much a moment ago."

"I was suddenly thinking about poison." He realized how bad that sounded the moment the words were out, and hastily continued. "You can build up a tolerance to poison, if you're poisoned slowly enough, with the right poison. Arsenic, for example. But it gets built into your body, because you have no choice but to build yourself from what's at hand. As a result, even if you stop taking the poison, some of it will be in you for years. Traces of it in your bones. And so some of it leeches back out into your body at odd times. It's hard to be free of it entirely, when it shows up in odd places."

Harry nodded, though he still looked wary. "A good analogy. I guess we paid more attention in potions than we thought."

Draco sighed. "I wish I could claim that brilliance. I wasn't that good a student. No, that was Astoria. She said my family was full of arsenic, and that's what made us all so blond and pale. She was right in her own way."

Ginny stopped looking dubious and instead looked sorrowful. "Draco, I know you've been through a lot, but I have to say, it's an awful thing to have such a good dessert bring up such painful thoughts."

Harry, somewhat surprisingly, came to his defense. "It took me ages to stop having odd reactions to cake. Cake has played some strange roles in my life."

Draco gave a sigh. "Look at us. You'd think we were the ones who had started this time turner mess, with how much we keep bringing up the past."

Ginny leaned on one hand, looking at them both. "I think we're all behaving a bit differently."

Harry considered, staring out the window at quiet night. "I think it's what the boys saw in those other worlds. Worlds where there were other versions of us, or we were other versions of ourselves. Or where we didn't exist at all. These past few days I feel like I've been tumbled in a kaleidoscope, with all these little fragments of me being jumbled about and reflected back all around me. Some of the past feels very present. And some of it has ceased to matter at all."

He dropped his gaze to the tablecloth, tracing an idle finger along the pattern. "Do you know, I spent a that first night back, when I should have been sleeping, looking through old papers, trying to make sure that we really hadn't changed anything." His finger went round and round, and Draco thought of wandless magic, the motions and patterns of spellwork, watching him.

Harry looked at him, quickly, startling him a little. "I must have had a dozen messages from Hermione, who was doing the same thing. We both found a bunch of stories we didn't remember or we remembered differently."

Ginny gasped and Draco sat more upright.

He laughed at the momentary alarm on the faces of the two others. "We picked completely different stories. She corrected me on a few of mine, and I did the same for her. The problem isn't that we messed anything up, it's just that we're getting _old_."

Ginny shook her head in a moment of embarrassed relief. "I had a glanced through a history book myself, and was getting close to the same sort of panic, when I remembered I'd annotated the damn thing, and summoned the notes. Most of them said some variant on 'what a load of rubbish, completely stupid!"

Draco laughed at that as well. "I came home to find that I had quite a lot of nasty correspondence. Much of it started with 'Have you forgotten' or 'Need I remind you', so I didn't have to hunt down any verification, it all came to me on its own."

In the pause that followed that statement, he felt a bit skinless, thinking of all the things he'd revealed already. "I should go." He blurted out.

Harry shook his head in denial. "Don't feel you need to run from saying odd things. I say odd things all the time. Stay a little longer."

Draco fussed with his empty plates. There were no servants to clear things away. They probably cleaned up after themselves. "I really don't want to impose so much on your time."

Hearing the ambivalence in his tone, Harry objected again. "If you truly need to go, or have just had enough for the night, by all means, we won't detain you. But If you are afraid of overstaying your welcome-" Harry looked a little flustered. "I'd be happy if you stayed. We often have some wine on the couch in the evenings, and watch terrible movies. It's a big couch, there's room enough for you."

Ginny stood, and started ordering the dirty dishes into the kitchen. "Stay. We'll be a moment or two, clearing this mess, and you can go gawp at way we live without us watching. But stay."

He smiled a little at that, which was enough to decide him. He stood, and though feeling awkward, moved to the living room.

The motion of the pictured caught his attention. The familiar ones were staring at him a bit, still surprised, but a few others, people he had never met in real life just showed curiosity. A cluster set a bit apart caught his attention.

They were the pictures of Harry's parents. Draco stopped, staring at the faces of the people he'd heard die only a few days before, in his subjective experience. The smiling woman who had given Harry his green eyes, and the slightly goofy looking man who had given him his dark hair. He'd known about the Potters all his life. He'd mocked them. It was something else to be staring at their images now, knowing in a visceral way what they had gone through to try to save their son.

Quite randomly, the thought occurred to him that Harry probably didn't have much in the way of first-hand memories of his parents. Pictures, memories from other people, visions and illusions over the years, but the vast majority secondhand or made up entirely, or ghosts that may have been fervent, but were still only echoes of living people. Only a horror imprint on the mind of a child almost too young to comprehend, and a brief glimpse by an adult who could not intervene. His own son had more concrete direct memories of Lily and James Potter than their own child did.

When he heard the sound of Harry and Ginny returning, he quickly turned his attention to another picture on the wall. It depicting a middle aged man in what appeared to be a firmly muggle setting, looking uncomfortably but optimistically out at the viewer while a pair of small children peered out from behind him.

Harry, walking in, leaned to see what had captured Draco's attention.

Draco cleared his throat. "Your cousin?"

Harry nodded an acknowledgment. "Dudley, yes."

Draco considered. "I'm a bit surprised he would stand for a wizarding picture. I thought they were quite against it."

Harry shrugged a bit. "His parents, my Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, were. Are, I suppose, but he has the decency to not mention them around me. Dudley, much to everyone's surprise, including, I think, his own, decided magic in the world was possibly a good thing. He had a bit of a rough time of it once he got free of his parents, and he's done a lot of growing up since. He could have been worse. I don't pretend my kids much like visits to see him, but I try to keep up with what family I have."

Harry moved further into the room, clicking buttons on some bright plastic device, making the television light up. He glanced back at the photo, where the two small children were waiving at him a bit tentatively. "He has a couple children of his own now, and that's mellowed him more. It puts a different spin on it, seeing childhood from the other side. He might not have been a good kid, but he's a decent man. A good dad, too. That counts a lot towards making him more forgivable." Harry glanced at Draco from the corner of his eye.

Draco noticed that Harry's gaze had moved from the photo to his own face. He grinned. "Not one of your more subtle commentaries, Potter."

Harry had the grace to blush and look away. "Yes, well, you can make your own judgements about any additional similarities, perhaps. Ginny's convinced his youngest will have some wizarding talents. She's pushed for keeping the acquaintance warm. Convinced he'll need us when a letter from Hogwarts arrives for his daughter. She may be at Hogwarts before our boys are finished."

Ginny came through the doorway, carrying the wine glasses. "You know I'm right. There's a little bit of Evans still running through that family." She moved to the couch, casually picking up a book that had been left behind and placing it on a side table. "You two need to come sit on the couch. The wine has finished breathing, and I have several truly terrible movies queued up. It won't make any sense if we're sober." She sat in the center of the couch lightly, wit a relaxed air. Draco noted that at some point she'd discarded her shoes, and it seemed both very strange and very normal to see Ginny Potter's pink toes peeking out from under the hem of her skirt. She patted the cushions to either side of her. "Come on, you can both sit beside me, and I'll stop either from you from taking anything too seriously."

They settled down to watch the movie. Draco had asked first if it was one of the ones with magic in it, because he wasn't quite so open to the spirit of the night that he could quite take the muggle viewpoint of his world, but they both assured him that no, there was nothing of that sort. Some sort of space adventure, with special effects, which was the muggle version of magic. It loked pretty convincing. When Harry tried to explain that most of it was done with actors only pretending to see things that the movie makers would add in later, he'd looked at the both in disbelief.

The movie was quite bad, but both Ginny and Harry laughed and tried to give coherent explanations where they could. Quite a few of them boiled down to 'because someone thought it would look neat'. He was reassured that while he was probably still missing a lot, the movie itself seemed to be missing a great deal as well. The wine was good, and it helped a bit. Quite a bit.

He drank one glass, and another, and didn't much notice when Ginny drew her legs up onto the couch and let them poke against him. Harry had an arm draped over her shoulders, and her hair spilled down. Surreptitiously, he pulled the holder from his own hair, letting it come free, as the wine and the laughter and the atmosphere made him feel relaxed.

The second movie was American, something set in a historical period. Both Ginny and Harry happily admitted they knew very little about it, and they made wild guesses at context. Draco's were no better than theirs. Somewhere around third bottle of wine, he realized that Ginny's feet were in his lap.

"Granger, your feet are cold." He protested, somewhat fuzzily.

She muttered something, and a blanket rose up from a nearby basket and draped over her. He tugged an edge of it up higher, enjoying the warmth. He leaned further back into the couch, feeling comfortably surrounded and enclosed.

It wasn't until the third movie was playing that the thought came to him, from some very far off place, that they had stopped explaining things to him, and he had stopped asking. If he'd been standing, he probably would have been swaying from all of the alcohol, but the couch held him quite securely. Ginny was now stretched out across both of them, her calves on his lap, her head on Harry's. She was quite asleep.Potter was also quite still, though in the low light, Draco couldn't tell if he was awake or not. Harry's hand had fallen onto the couch, and if he stretched his own hand out a little, he could probably touch it.

Draco looked around the room. Ginny's toes were poking out from under the blanket. He adjusted the edge of the blanket a little, the thought floating up through the murk of his mind that he didn't want her to get cold.

Harry, stirred at the motion. "I'm glad you're here, Draco. Glad we all are." His voice was thick, sounding tired and a bit marinaded.

Draco turned a little to look at him. Ginny shifted, muttering an indistinct protest, and both men froze, looking embarrassed. Draco had to clench his hand in the blanket against the sudden urge to soothe her by patting at her side. After a moment, she settled, and took a few more quiet, steady breaths. He cleared the remnants of wine from his mouth and spoke quietly. "It's not quite what I expected."

Harry's glasses caught the reflection off the screen as he moved his head to face Draco. "The unexpected is often the best part of life. I don't just mean the wonderful parts. But so much of my life taught me to expect the worst, and having something else happen instead has been such a joy."

He reached out a little, poking the device that controlled the television, and while the picture continued, the sound level dropped a good deal. "The greatest kindness I ever saw in my life was from the people who just made a little more room for me in their lives. Who made sure I wasn't forgotten or just used or treated as a thing." There was a brief silence, during which Draco coud hear one of the owls making soft noises from their perches. Harry continued, hesitation slowing his voice furter. "I wonder if you have that. I know it's taken me too long to see that you might not, but I hope, sincerely hope, that you know you can find that here." He made a small gesture to indicate the room. "I don't know what your life taught you to expect, but it occurs to me that with everything that happened, I never really heard you arguing about events for your own sake. Only for Scorpius. It's easier to be brave for others. But we need to remember individual kindness as well."

Draco found his throat tightening up a bit at the wholely unexpected speech.

Harry did reach out his hand, and softly touched the back of Draco's. The contact was gone almost instantly, but the warmth lingered. "I know it's a bit obvious to say at this point, but we have a lot in common. I know we spent a lot of our lives as enemies, but in a way I feel that helps us understand each other better now. Not a lot of people know what we've been through nearly as well." There was a trace more humor in his voice. "Granted, we know a lot of it because we put each other through it, but it still counts."

Harry cleared his throat. "Anyway, I might be more than a little drunk, but I'm completely sincere in saying there's room at the table for you any time you need a little family. Having Ginny agree to marry me was an amazement. Being a parent was the most terrifying thing I ever did, and that's saying a lot. Doing it again hasn't been easier." Harry's attention shifted to the pictures on the wall, where various faces smiled back at them. "The first time I held Albus I realized I had no idea what it was to be someone's brother. With James I could at least guess at being a father or a son. But a brother? I had no idea. And then I had a daughter. A _daughter_ was a new discovery entirely as well. And just when you think you've figured out how to be the parent for who they are, they've changed."

Draco nodded, agreeing, though he didn't know if Harry could see him in the dim light.

"But we've managed, last few days excepted, to do it without too many disasters. I had to learn how to expand my life and not be afraid to let people in, to let them matter. For so long I was afraid I would just lose, over and over again. Now I have this family, and the last few days have reminded me that this is real, all these people who have woven me into their lives, all the patterns we form. Like a- well, like a blanket." Harry patted at the blanket covering Ginny.

Draco suspected it wasn't necessarily the one he had in mind.

It took him a while, thinking through the haze of too much wine and a good deal of history. to think of a response. As had been the case so much that night, his thoughts came back to Astoria.

"I might have never been able to understand you if it hadn't been for Astoria. She showed me what it really was to live under a curse. A curse that will kill you. And you- you knew why you carried yours, and it wasn't fair or right, but you could at least put it into some kind of context. Astoria didn't have that. It was just something that was passed down to her, like a family heirloom, a reminder of some distant and dusty ancestor that you got to take possession of. A frailty, a promise of dying young."

He felt himself choking up at the thought of it, all the arguments and despair that boiled down to nothing to be done. "She'd known all her life. All her life she'd known there were choices she could make that would kill her. Can you imagine- I suppose you can. She grew up with that seriousness. She didn't make choices lightly. And she chose me. And then she chose Scorpius.

"I know I was a disappointment to my father- as a grown man I've come to see that as maybe not such a bad thing. Now that I have a son of my own, I try to be a good father to him, and I'm aware it's not the way my father raised me. But I've had two people show extraordinary courage for me, for poor, mediocre Draco Malfoy- my mother, who walked me away from Hogwarts rather than see me lose in a battle, betraying some of the deadliest people in the world for a chance to save me. And my wife, who saw the best I could be, and loved me. She really did love _me_." Even now he couldn't keep the wonder from his voice.

He shifted a little, though his discomfort was more emotional than physical. "Since I lost that, there's hasn't been much else. I don't need to work. I read and do research and care for the family estate, but I could easily hire someone else to do any of that. If it wasn't for Scorpius I might have done, and walked away. He's getting older, and will leave. Will need to leave. Astoria was quite firm about that, about not having him for a legacy or a name, but for himself. And I'd like him to go into the world a bit better off. I suppose I should give some thought to what I'll do after that."

He was aware that Ginny had woken up at some point in the conversations, and was watching him. The compassion on her face, mirrored on Harry's, was nearly enough to undo him. He hadn't known the words were going to come out, hadn't even known they were in there in the first place, and had no way to prepare himself for how they would be received. All he saw on their faces was a deep understanding though, and somehow that made the truth of what he'd said sink in a little deeper. He'd have no idea what to do next.

Ginny smoothed her hand against her husband's leg in a soothing motion, and then sat up. Draco made an inadvertent sound of protest as she drew her legs away.

"My poor boys." She said, a little unclearly. Her hair was mussed, little wisps floating across her face. She pushed them out of the way. "What you are going to do next is get some proper sleep. Have some water, lie down, and don't do anything more until you are ready."

Draco shifted again, thinking of the process of getting up and going home.

Ginny forestalled him. "Don't even think about it. This is the most comfortable couch in the wizarding world. It can take the weight of your worries for the night." She patted his shoulder affectionately as she move past. "You're among friends now. Sleep."

He blinked, but it seemed the simply pat on the shoulder melted the rest of his resistance. He hadn't really wanted to leave, anyway.

Harry stayed on the other end of the couch for another long moment. Then he rose as well, smiling fondly. He made a motion, and a pillow came floating out from some darker corner of the room. "Here. Sleep easy." He gave Draco a pat on the shoulder and a warm, slightly weary smile. "Among friends."

He quietly walked off into the darkness and quiet of the house, following his wife.

The television had been shut off, and the room was quiet. Tentatively, with a little dry amusement at the turn of events, he stretched out to sleep on the couch. The last of the wine wrapped comfort around his bones, and he felt like it was dissolving something else. The last of the arsenic laced into his bones, the old poisons of isolation and shame. He imaged the colorless grey defused with shades; the grass greens of fresh growth Astoria had brought, the blues of the his son's eyes when newborn, the reds of warmth flushing skin, and the bright, overwhelming lights of turning through and around time for each other. A future that could be bright yet, leading somewhere forward.

He fell asleep somewhere in that vision, and if he felt the hands that moved him here and there for comfort, and adjusted a blanket over him, or patted his shoulder as he was left to dream, it was no longer foreign or jarring. He could rest here. He was among friends.

The End

 **Thanks, Robert Frost**  
-David Ray

Do you have hope for the future?  
Someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.  
Yes, and even for the past, he replied.  
That it will turn out to have been all right  
For what it was, something we can accept,  
Mistakes made by the selves we had to be,  
Not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,  
Or what looking back half the time it seems  
we could so easily have been, or ought...  
The future, yes, and even for the past,  
That it will become something we can bear.  
And I too, and my children, so I hope,  
Will recall as not too heavy the tug  
Of those albatrosses I sadly placed  
Upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,  
Yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,  
And it brings strange peace that itself passes  
Into past, easier to bear because  
You said it, rather casually, as snow  
went on falling in Vermont many years ago.


End file.
